G7 ministers meet in Paris as US, Russian and Ukrainian delegations prepare for talks in Abu Dhabi

The settlement runs through a US-Russia channel in a Gulf capital. Europe's influence comes from money, not from a role in the talks: it funds Kyiv's debt service and holds frozen Russian assets. European governments are not acting as one bloc. Finland and Norway called Putin on their own, Denmark objected, and France invited Global South states to a G7 meeting. This adds to the evidence that NATO cohesion is weakening and that Paris is pursuing its own diplomatic track separate from Washington's. Trump's "different shape" remark is the clearest sign yet that Washington will accept territorial change. Ukrainian sovereign debt, European defense budgets and European gas prices are the most exposed. The likelier outcome within weeks is a framework on security arrangements and ceasefire sequencing agreed in Abu Dhabi without European signatures, followed by requests that Europe fund guarantees and reconstruction. The read fails if Moscow withdraws from the talks after Ukraine's strikes on its refineries, or if Washington makes European consent a condition of the framework.